Rob Pardo Interview from 2008

Warcraft 4 Rob Pardo interview

Rob Pardo was Lead Designer on Warcraft 3.

Blizzard's VP of game design, Rob pardo, was asked about the possibility of the developer creating the next Warcraft 4 real tim-time strategy (RTS) game in the popular series. While the MMORPG World of Warcraft has over 10 million subscribers, the franchise started out in the RTS genre, so will it be returning to its RTS roots? In an interview from las year he answered June 15 2008.

''Yeah,of course there's a chance,''he confirmed. ''The way that we develop things, each time a develepment team becomes available, because they're done with creating games that they've been doing, they have alot say over what their next game is. So what would take is for one of our teams to decide that they want to make Warcraft RTS and of course, there'll be some talk about doing that and I'm sure after StarCraft 2 ships, it will be one the ideas on the table for that team to do, but that's preety far off in the future and it would really be determined by a combination of the dev team and the company leadership.''

Mr. Pardo continued: ''I think that one of the things that makes us ultimately successful as a company is that we're more lead by our game-making decisions and not so much by business decisions, which is one of the reasons why this question used to be the StarCraft question. Back when we did StarCraft,we did Brood War, and everyone though they were amazing games; they were successful and i used to get all these questions like,''Why are you doing another Warcraft RTS, shouldn't you be doing StarCraft?'' Well Warcraft was what the team wanted to make, they were burned out on the StarCraft universe, That was the game they wanted to make and as far as WarCraft goes, we love the universe- it's an amazingly successful universe. If we want to go back and do it, maybe we will, maybe we won't.''

There is hope
Also, I'm sure that if they decide that they wish to do Warcraft 4, there is enough room in the Warcraft universe to fit it in next to WoW. Many Warcraft Novels are for example never, or only briefly, touched on in WoW.

I doubt it... a strongly Singleplayer based RTS isnt what people nowadays want. For competitive Multiplayer Blizzard has Starcraft 2 and their upcoming DotA-Clone.

Warcraft franchise will be continued in WoW for AT LEAST 3 more expansions... WoW will never end, Blizzard will switch parts of their team from WoW to other games but as long as there are 1-2 million people playing wow they wont just shut down the servers.

I'm pretty sure we will see Starcraft 3 or WoW 2 before we see Warcraft 4.

IMO they could develop a Warcraft 4 in a timeline of 40-60 years from now on.

Closer timeline would suck because it would be too less time to develop new storylines and mix the races a bit (maybe even wipe out some races). Further timeline would suck as there would only be completely foreign characters in it. If there was Warcraft 4 I'd like to have veteran characters that die (e.g.: Uther Lightbringer - he was a hero of WCII and died in WCIII) so they could weave new characters around the few existing children characters when they are mature or even old (like Anduin or Thralls son).

As for the Storyline it had to include some titan action, titans that reshape Azeroth while only a minority of the current factions survive (in the progress of the reshape of Azeroth they would wipe out about 2/3 of the races). While the Titans do place new races into Azeroth (as their former races failed them - could be one reason) new alliances have to be made and a new storyline with possibly new threats.

In the aftermath of that story WoW II is based on WC4. Ideally timeframe would be: WC4 and WoW I final expansion released on year x - WoW II released on year x+3 or x+4. This way they could explain the storyline in WC4 but they wouldn't lose that many subscriptions because the final expansion of wow is still "current content" and they could just swap over to WoW II.

If ever they are to do a WoW2, and I wish that they would rather sooner than later, I feel the need for a WCIV would be huge. An RTS can advance the story, introduce awesome characters, restore the scale, epicness and intricacy of the world and brick back the sense of conflict, and good storytelling that WoW had lacked (not through any fault of Blizzard, but its format), on which a new MMORPG could build a world even greater and more immersive than WoW. So, yes please!

...as if it's somehow IMPOSSIBLE to make an WoW Expansion and a Warcraft IV near-simultaneous release where the story ties-in with each other/takes place in the same timeline. Right?

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Originally Posted by OldSnail

Look at it this way, traditional RTS games are dead, with exception of Starcraft 2 that most of the people bought purely out of nostalgia. On the other hand, MMOs are dying genre, so maybe we can expect brand new game related to warcraft lore.

Ummmm... that's news to me. They seem to be quite thriving from what I've been seeing.

Look at it this way, traditional RTS games are dead, with exception of Starcraft 2 that most of the people bought purely out of nostalgia. On the other hand, MMOs are dying genre, so maybe we can expect brand new game related to warcraft lore.

Company Of Heroes 2 and the up coming Command and Conquer game disagrees with your RTS is dead along with Gearbox working on rereleasing Homeworld 1 and 2 with a graphical update. The original creators of Homeworld are working on a new rts called Hardware: Shipbreakers. So the genre is not dead, it just isn't very popular atm. It is like saying point and click adventure games were dead which isn't true, just look at The Walking Dead, they too aren't as popular. For something that was purely bought purely out of nostalgia, it sold pretty damn well. Blizzard would be stupid NOT to think about a WC4 rts after WoW.